No video even with 2nd video card

[Bootie]

Buddy o' mine just handed me a PC for possible reformat. Hooked it up to a working monitor and turned it on... everything sounds like it's powering up fine, but I get nothing in the monitor.

Okay, so perhaps it's a bad video card. I put in a video card from a working PC, power up... same nothingness.

So what is this telling me? Something on the motherboard gone bad which feeds the video card?

[Sylvander]

Sylvander’s Diagnostic Flowcharts
Download a copy of my diagnostic flowcharts from here
www.erniek.eclipse.co.uk/downloads/sylvanderdiags.zip
and print them to leaf through.
Begin on the STARTUP chart.
Do you hear no single short beep?
If not then see...
-----------------------------------------------
NO POST, NO BEEP, NO VIDEO
www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=39685
-----------------------------------------------

[Paleo Pete]

First thing to do is reseat the RAM and video card, then unplug everything but video and RAM and try a bare bones boot. If that gets no results try a different power supply. Also check it closely if it's been opened up and worked on previously, a screw could be loose and lodged against a contact creating a direct short.

Depending on how old it is also check it for Bad Capacitors (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=25482). Anything in the P-III or AMD Athlon/Duron pre 2GHz range is suspect, those are mostly all within the time frame for a bad batch of capacitors, and some early P-4 or AMD 2GHz+ boards, but not many. I've seen a couple of the 1st generation Pentium class boards with bad caps too but very few, it's usually P-III range boards, 700-800MHz and up.

That's just the start of the list, other things can be wrong with a used machine too, especially if someone else has already been inside it, I'm listing just the most common basic issues to start with...bad RAM, bad power supply, overheated CPU, bad CMOS battery (do check that, it's only $3-4), bad CMOS chip, bad motherboard, bad IDE drives or cables can cause no video, someone plugged in a 2X CD ROM that should be run from a sound card controller, and I've seen fried CD ROM drives that otherwise should be compatible cause no video when plugged in.